Tungsten-Filled 10 Oz Gold Bar Found In The Middle Of Manhattan's Jewelry District

It is one thing for tungsten-filled gold bars to appear in the UK, or in Germany: after all out of sight, and across the Atlantic, certainly must mean out of mind, and out of the safe. However, when a 10 ounce 999.9 gold bar bearing the stamp of the reputable Swiss Produits Artistiques Métaux Précieux (PAMP, with owner MTP) and a serial number (serial #038892, likely rehypothecated in at least 10 gold ETFs across the world but that's a different story), mysteriously emerges in the heart of the world's jewerly district located on 47th street in Manhattan, things get real quick. Moments ago, Myfoxny reported that a 10-ounce gold bar costing nearly $18,000 turned out to be a counterfeit. The discovery was made by the dealer Ibrahim Fadl, who bought the PAMP bar in question from a merchant who has sold him real gold before. "But he heard counterfeit gold bars were going around, so he drilled into several of his gold bars worth $100,000 and saw gray tungsten -- not gold. The bar was filled with tungsten, which weighs nearly the same as gold but costs just over a dollar an ounce."

What makes so devious is a real gold bar is purchased with the serial numbers and papers, then it is hollowed out, the gold is sold, the tungsten is put in, then the bar is closed up. That is a sophisticated operation.

MTB, the Swiss manufacturer of the gold bars, said customers should only buy from a reputable merchant. The problem, he admits, is Ibrahim Fadl is a very reputable merchant.

Raymond Nessim, CEO Manfra, Tordell & Brookes, said he has reported the situation to the FBI and Secret Service.

The Secret Service, which deals with counterfeits, said it is investigating.

And cue panic on the realization that virtually any gold bar in the world, not just those in Europe and Australia, which have already had close encounters with Tungsten substitutes, but also New York may be hollowed out and have a real worth of a few dollars max. Which, sadly, is fitting considering our main story from last night was the realization that an unknown amount of Chinese iron ore had either never existed or had simply vaporized, and was no longer serving as the secured collateral to various liabilities circulating in the electronic ether. After all, only the most naive out there could conceive of gold being sacrosanct when every other asset class is being diluted to infinity by a regime that has long since run out of money.

As for gold-based transactions on West 47th street: look for that market to grind to a halt at least for as long as it takes for this scandal to be forgotten too.

The only open question remaining will be how much of the gold located 90 feet below Libert 33 is in the same Tungstenized format. For what it's worth: it is unlikely we will ever find out.

All that said, with false flags rampant these days, we would not be surprised if this is merely yet another attempt to discredit gold, this time physical, as an undilutable medium of warehousing wealth. So buyer beware: in a time when everyone is broke, triple check before exchanging one store of wealth for another.

Forget the Au (gold) I will take all the W (Wolfram a.k.a tungsten) you have to sell at $1.00 an ounce. Whomever wrote that article or headline does not know the relative cost of their metals. True Wolfram costs less than $1,700 an ounce but much more than $1.00.

Regardless of content, you will not get much 'ring' from something housed in a plastic assay pack. For that matter, there is .7 troy ounce difference in the weight of 10 troy ounces of gold and 10 troy ounces of tungsten. Make an allowance for the gold wrapper, and there is still an easily measurable difference. Either we have a sloppy 'reputable' NY gold dealer who can smile on video after getting fucked out of $100,000, or this story is pure propaganda.

10 troy ounces of anything is still 10 troy ounces. There is no difference in weight between 10 troy ounces of gold and 10 troy ounces of tungsten.

If, on the other hand you are claiming that the volume of 10 troy ounces of gold is different than that of 10 troy ounces of tungsten, you are correct, but the difference is much smaller than you suggest. Gold's density is 19.30 gm/cm3. Tungsten's density is 19.25 gm/cm3,only 0.26% different. 10 troy ounces of gold occupies a volume of 16.116 cm3. 16.116 cm3 of tungsten weighs 310.236 gms or 9.974 troy ounces. The difference is only 0.0259 troy ounces. While it is not difficult to measure weight to a high precision, the high precision measurement of volume is quite another matter.

It is possible to include a small amount of osmium or iridium, which are denser than gold, in the tungsten to make the density match gold's density. Osmium and iridium are both rare and expensive.

If, on the other hand you are claiming that the volume of 10 troy ounces of gold is different than that of 10 troy ounces of tungsten, you are correct, but the difference is much smaller than you suggest. Gold's density is 19.30 gm/cm3. Tungsten's density is 19.25 gm/cm3,only 0.26% different. 10 troy ounces of gold occupies a volume of 16.116 cm3. 16.116 cm3 of tungsten weighs 310.236 gms or 9.974 troy ounces. The difference is only 0.0259 troy ounces. While it is not difficult to measure weight to a high precision, the high precision measurement of volume is quite another matter.

Add in casting variations, and you can easily negate any measured volumetric difference.

Goddamnit, don't shit on their conspiracy parade... The secret service agent I talked to said the same thing... I realize that these people are trained to be liars, but I tend to have a fairly good idea when people are fibbing, even a little. He seemed trustworthy on this particular issue.

If that's not true then what about all of this dragon family and its secret winning lawsuit at the hague and *head explodes*

Does silver have a tungsten equivalent (cheap replacement with nearly the same density)? I don't think it does, which would make silver a safer bet than gold. Also the returns on counterfeit silver would be far below that of counterfeit gold, so the incentives to cheat in the silver market would be correspondingly lower.

that's why you weigh them and measure volume to determine density and derive composition

The tungsten/gold problem is that the density is extremely similar, so much so that tungsten can successfully pass itself off as gold to several decimal places. If there's nothing you can do the same with regarding silver (and I don't believe there is, and even if it were it would be far less profitable to counterfeit), then silver becomes the superior store of value. It may tarnish, unlike gold which doesn't, but if it is that much easier to show it is real, it functions better overall for the purpose of wealth protection.

I agree with your estimate of the profitability in small volumes. As an academic exercise...One could make an excellent silver counterfeit if great care were taken to choose an alloy that matched the density. It would likely be some alloy of lead, which has a density 11.34 g/ml (vs Ag's 10.49). A large bar fashioned in this way could be made difficult to detect by any mechanism other than drilling it.

If lead were the dominant metal, the alloy might have a lower melting point that Ag. If so, you could heat it while spinning it with a constant force and monitoring the speed to detect the apparent change in momentum caused by the sudden phase-change of the core melting.

Au: 19.30 g/mlW: 19.25 g/ml

W is 99.7% the density of Au.

So assuming the volume of the conterfeit bar and the real bar are the same, that means a 10 toz bar would be 0.03 troy oz light.

you have gold at 19.32 and tungsten at 19.30, almost an exact match, and not much else is in that 19+ range except for plutonium which is radioactive and hard to get, so tungsten is really the only practical substitute in fake gold.

with silver at 10.50, you can substitle iron (7.89) and lead (11.35) in the correct ratio to mimic the density of silver, that is easily done.

The story is bullshit or the guy is an idiot. If the guy is an idiot it is probably the reason he ended up with the fake gold bars. There is no way that the bars were “drilled out” and then “filled” … it was made that way from day one.

They were first sighted in Australia about two years ago filled with Chinese junk metal. About five seconds later the government shut up really fast and hushed the media.

It is still talked about with quite a bit of venom on the Australian blogs, only place you'll find it. All those people took delivery for their security and were handed a pound of lead.

It either means the government licked the center out of the oreo cookie, or the chinese swapped steel contract for real gold and delivered back the "gold" on request. Either way...my bet is on China buying up lots of gold since the shitstorm began

Largest gold and silver theft in the history of mankind. He with the gold rules still applies in every point of history that gets remembered, written down and socked away for later reference.

What is a bond worth if your adversary has all the equity. Then again, what is the equity worth if not distributed, trade is anything but fungible and gravitates towards the path of least resistance. egg/chicken time or is it chicken/egg time...

Doc, ZH is known for many things. Politeness as a prerequisite for posting definitely ain't one of them. I quickly learned to read and keep my questions to myself and hope they get answered by someone else's post. It usually has worked for me.

2008-2010 : It was the equivalent of the Aussie BreX...now it's looking like it'll get a lot bigger. Again, lots of bloger blogs with the reference material. But the mine names and the timeline should jog your memory. It was big international press, then it just vanished as soon as the word BreX slipped from someones lips.

Yeah..a lot bigger, theives operate on greed not on sense...if people are passing the buck on this nonsense across ocean's over eBay and through direct banking channels. Well...it's time for people to double check their stacks. Not kidding either.

It means REAL gold and silver is going much higher versus the lead pieces being handed out.

When doing the search turn ON private browsing, google news doesn't apply country filters and shows all articles regardless of country on the subject.

Recently, the NSA has had major publishers remove "Alternative News" sites from search results that contain content on on the War in Iraq, Afghanistan and even Iran, US diplomatic and political scandals (like Wikileaks notorious cables), UFOs, even astro physics. Unfortunately, the government , major publishers and search engines are forced to work closely to chill Internet discourse. America OnLine, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are slowly turning the Internet into an information superhighway dominated by barricades, toll booths, off-ramps that lead to dead ends and track you everywhere. This censorship is accomplished by geo-location filtering: the restriction or modifying of web content based on the geographical region of the user. In addition to countries, such filtering can now be implemented for states, cities, and even individual IP addresses.

Anonymity and Private Browsing

Gibiru Offers Users Private Browsing of Uncensored Seach Results. Gibiru is presently based on modified Google Search algorithm that limits tracking of your internet behavior and privacy thus removing behavioral search result filtering and censoring so that you get natural untargeted search results. Gibiru offers different levels of privacy depending on the browser that you use. The following table explains the difference in Privacy a Gibiru user can expect depending on the browser you are using. For Maximum Privacy Gibiru recommends Safari or IE. Protect Your Browsing Freedom and Internt Freedom and Set Gibiru as your Homepage.

Gibiru HTTPS:

Gibiru now offers HTTPS 128 bit encrypted search, for those who are especially concerned about third party snoopers. the 128 bit https encryption allows Gibiru users to search the web anonymously and under the same level on encryption that most online stores and banks use to protect user's provacy. To execute https encrypted search, simply click on the https link at the top of the Gibiru home page and you will be redirected to https://anonymous-gibiru.com/

There is a secure Chromium coming out from the latest branch development that is being jogged into place to natively use Gibiru as the search engine. Only for linux though.

Gibiru is a decent search engine the problem is it still has to pass information, plus the idea it's not sponsored by anything may make the project short lived. ixquick is the fall back if it vanishes online.

For security though, personal tracking, most modern laptops have TPM to act as a hardware agent in encrypting hard drives, anything after 2009 to give a timeline. TPM is also used as a beacon to locate stolen or missing laptops.

It is also one of the weakest sentries on the planet because it's hardware and rarely gets updated because entrust as a security platform has been considered useless in the Engineering IT community. So be aware, newer laptops, doesn't matter what part of the planet you are in someone can find you by cell or laptop.

Of course, only if you register it for support. That's why people should support their local techies, we might be weirdo's, but you'll find a common thread is we've all got a beef with someone peering in on our work until it's finished. There are fixes to cripple TPM, but you'll never hear about it from Dell, Apple, HP or Acer.

Alternative is install an Old OS before the Patriot Act extensions that has no clue about a monitored universe. It also improves network speed without messy, poorly coded overhead.

they are addressing a very real problem: there just isn't enough gold to meet the demand for pamp suisse bars

which is why the bars must be made of other materials beneath the cladding

the G20 nations must agree to value tungsten and gold equally.

these changes are necessary for a very simple reason--gold is a scarce material. Our uses of gold are growing as our population and our economy grows. So, in the face of this worldwide shortage of gold, and our rapidly growing need for bars, the only really prudent course is to reduce our dependence upon gold for making our bars.

Our existing gold bars won't disappear and they won't even become rarities. We estimate that there are now 12 billion--I repeat, more than 12 billion gold bars that are now outstanding. We will make another billion before we halt production. And they will be used side-by-side with the new tungsten bars.

If anybody has any idea of hoarding gold bars, let me say this. The IMF, the central banks, the commodity warehouses, the bullion banks, the various mines, and the governments of the world have a lot of gold on hand. A shit ton of gold. Plus, there is a hundred-fold more imaginary gold available through various paper products and rehypothecation. All of it can be, and it will be used, together with innovative new legislation, to keep the price of gold in line with its value in our present gold bars. There will be no profit in holding them out of circulation for the value of their gold content.

You make a good point SafelyGraze, gold is really rare for its duly reasons!

Why Gold Is So Rare

"UNLIKE diamonds or gem stones, which are produced under the Earth by extreme pressures and heat, gold is a NON-TERRESTRIAL metal, meaning that all the gold that exists today, above and below ground, is all there ever will be. Gold is not produced by the geology of the Earth; in fact, Gold doesn’t even originate from this solar system. All the gold that exists on Earth today arrived many billions of years ago during the early period of Earth’s formation. Gold is a heavy element with an atomic number of 79. As with other elements heavier that iron, gold was created in the far reaches of space in some of the most violent events in the universe – supernovas."

Dear safelygraze, with your kind of thinking we should allow food manufacturers to add any other materials needed in manufacturing food items when they run short of the right ingredients. The use of melamine in powdered milk by the Chinese comes to mind.

There is more than enough gold for our financial system. The problem is that gold does not accommodate profligate governments that wish to spend more than they collect.

In the case of melamine use by the Chinese, the government at least had the decency to shoot the perpetrators. In the USA the government will never shoot the counterfeiters of the currency because they ARE in fact the counterfeiters.

the post was quoting president johnson, when he signed the coinage act to replace silver coins with the clad ones.

I substituted "gold" for "silver" and "bar" for "coin"

the link in the spoiler takes you to the text of his signing statement.

by the same presidential logic that declared nickel-clad copper (in the form of coins) "the same value as" silver, gold-clad tungsten would logically be "the same value as" gold. by fiat. "because it is so rare".

man, who would want to create doubt about the authenticity of the gold people are buying...hmmm...plus it looks like it took above average skill with above average equipment....watch how it is covered...if it is a major repeated story we will know more about our conterfeiter is....

Very strange place to drill. The side with a smaller drill bit would make a lot more sense? Especially when it's on "suspected" that their maybe be tungsten in some of his bars. How many did he "destroy" in that manner prior to finding one?

Its always good to be suspicious of these kind of story's, especially with how much is at stake in the world at the moment, but if this guy is a large dealer it wouldn't be that unusual for a large proportion of his inventory to be sent off to be melted down and made into jewellery to increase his profit margins. Drilling into several bars in such a case would not result in any real loss of value.

There are all kinds of tungsten amalgamates sold for pine wood derby cars, to get the car as close to weight limit as possible. That tungsten looks a lot like what this guy claims to have found as it is soft and maleable.

All the same, remember that old stereotype of a gold prospecter biting the gold coin to make sure its real?

This story stinks. Look at the construciton of that bar. No way on earth it was "hollowed out". The Tungsten was put in the mould before the gold was poured around it. This was made by the people who normally cast the bars. Inside job. Propaganda.

Very UNLIKELY in Switzerland, everything runs according to schedule, is extremely neat, well documented (and recorded for posterity at the refineries). Nosy neighbors will complain to the police if there is smoke rising at an unacceptable time.

The LBMA quality controls are more suspect, especially with the recent proliferation of Russian & Chinese refiners.

Smells more like an OLD SCHOOL TRADE WAR, discredit the opposition.

<insert> and profit handsomely while furthering State goals at the same time

If the certificates prove to be genuine, the most likely modus operandi is that the counterfeiter bought real PAMP bars with genuine certificates. The original bars were then melted down and 10% of the gold recast over a tungsten bar.

Winston, you're right. Why then is there an indentation in the Tungsten from the drill bit used to drill through the very soft gold? This stinks even more than I first thought. That grey block is not even tungsten. Even high speed steel drill bits would not cut the Tungsten.

Tungsten Putty comes in 1oz and is the easiest way to fine tune the weight of your Pinewood Derby, Awana and Royal Ranger car. Tungsten Putty is made from 100% pure Tungsten Powder and is very malleable, easy to apply and will not dry out even after several weeks exposed to air and sunlight. It is very simple to use all you have to do is take a piece, knead it until it is pliable, and press it onto the car. It will stick best if pressed into a hole or cavity on the car. There is no longer any need to stress during the final weigh in of your car!

Why use Tungsten??? Tungsten is a metal with one of the highest densities weighing in at 1.7 times heavier than lead. Only gold, platinum, and a few other rare metals have a similar density. Having more concentrated weight means having more control with weight placement in your car to acheive the center of mass that you are targeting. Tungsten is also non-toxic and environmentally friendly so it is safe for children and adults to handle and work with.

Whatever you do, please don't accept Krugmanrands, which have begun to show up in both London & Manhattan.

Krugmanrands: A gold colored powder-coated round, composed of 10% tin and 90% nano-coated bullshit particles, bearing the slogans "In Diocletian We Trust" and "To Infinity & Beyond!" on one side, alongside "CTRL+P," and having the other side enscribed with "What, Me Worry?" alongside an engraved likeness of one Ben S. Bernanke (Shakey McShakester).

The anti-counterfeiting measures on fiat would be incredibly tough to beat (the silver threads, the printed dollar amount on films trapped beneath the top fibers, and a whole host of other shit), besides the largest denomination in circulation is $100 ..... so it wouldn't be worth it. Maybe at $1,000 or $10,000 .... but I'm sure you'ld need some very, very expensive printing equipment (pretty sure it's gravure)..... and then there's the issue with the paper.

Then of course is the 50 years behind bars. At least with bank robbery (especially if you work for the bank), is a far easier way to lay your hands on someone else's currency. They don't even put you in jail for bank robbery as long as you do it with a pen instead of a gun, and send some of your booty to the pres, or buy his books (launder).

The Krugerands from what I remember what they looked like ... appear to be an easy coin to counterfeit. I know that there are alloys out there "newgold" that sort of look like gold, but surely wouldn't pass the density tests.

$500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills are indeed in circulation and are legal tender, although not often used. Since they were last printed in 1945, they do not have modern anti-counterfeiting features. If you tried to pass one though it would come under great scrutiny and probably a few WTFs? The US uses intaglio printing which is expensive, but can be faked.

A wise man once said, "The best way to rob a bank is to own one." Noting that the Fed is the banker's bank ...

why make it sounds so intricate... do not count out the 'counterfeiting' as an INSIDER's job

( do we still call the insider's 'counterfeit' as 'counterfeit'... or just unauthorized, illegal printing??? LOL )

PRINTING PRESS GOES RAMPANT

--------------

"The consequences of printing press money are horrendous. If you could make the world rich by having all the central banks print unlimited money, then we have been making a mistake for the last several thousand years of human history." -- David Stockman, 2012

This is far more blatant than the previously discovered tungsten tainted bars. I remember the previous ones having three tungsten rods embedded within them, and there was a big discussion here regarding how this might have been accomplished.

In this case, it is a big slab of tungsten wrapped in a gold costume. This would indicate that a carefully weighed planchet was manufactured and then stamped with the imprint. Stamping would require a set of precision-made counterfeit dies and a heavy duty industrial press. Whoever did this is running a sophisticated operation.

And why would you have such a sophisticated operation for just one bar?

Exactly. This is a big time swindle. Also, if they went to the trouble to make a precision copy of the die used to make the Swiss Produits Artistiques Métaux Précieux stamping, they probably made replica dies of the stampings used by other bar manufacturers as well.

agreed LJS....but that even makes it worse. If it's easy to do, then there's probably more than one counterfeiter.

Yes, buy from reputable dealers, but why buy the big bars anyway if not just for the testosterone affect.

My philosophy is the SMALLER the denomination the better. e.g. I'd rather have 15,000 Roosevelt Silver Dimes than a single 1,000 OZ Silver Bar (even though they are super cool). Go with small denominations because if we ever are in an SHTF situation, the smaller denominations are also easier to liquidate.

Not really that sophisticated. The dies (no big deal), the press (no big deal) ... all fairly easy to accomplish for a couple hundred grand, less some hush money to the guys doing the work. Just how the heck do you move the few hundred or few thousand bars out into the market place without raising the eire of the Government (depositing the "cash"), and having customer's assay a few random bars. You would end up "dead" within a week would be my guess. Try cheating a guy out of a few hundred grand and see what happens. (The folks that move money in the black market ....like that have to be powerful and dangerous .... not the folks one would cheat, without getting killed). I could go along with a foreign government (or even our own .... aka Fast & Furious) doing this .... as a measure to mitigate a "run" to gold ..... by the average joe with $50k or a $100k.

You're a lot closer to how this was done than the FOX story. No way you could hollow it out and fill with molten tungsten, just wouldn't work because of tungsten's extreme melting point. This looks like you said, a tungsten planchet clad with gold. I'd guess they did a partial pour of gold, laid the tungsten bar on it then completed the pour then stamped it. There may be a way to use electrolysis or powder coating to cover the tungsten with gold but I'm not very familiar with those techniques. It appears like this one had a fairly thick coating of gold to be able to accept the stamping. Coins are very hard to create with a core of tungsten.

Electroplating is children's chemistry set play, gold leaf at least requires some skill and artistic ability.

Directional drilling doesn't appear to be the culprit, since big oil doesn't even have the technology to get that uniformely close to the outer edge from a single point of entry.

Unfortunately, the hardest part of a counterfeitting setup would actually be the basic skills (which are becoming increasingly rare and increasingly idled). You could pick up the major parts used for under a grand. Precision measuring and quality engraving tools would run a bit more, but still less than a bag of iCrap for the masses.

Thats right. Tungsten (W) melts at around 5900 and gold (AU) at around 1950. The problem is more one of weight. Tungsten is slightly lighter than gold. By weighing the bars, one will detect the fakes. Then drill into those which fail the scales test.

Excellent point red pill. All of my gold and silver are one oz. coins. I'd like to take credit for being really smart, but the truth is that I have never bought such large quantities at one time, so coins were my natural option. I did buy most of the gold at around $700.00 per oz. and silver around $16.00 per oz. I feel pretty happy but since fiat is crap the rise in $ value (on paper) means little to me. My metal holdings look and fill much better than the fiat pension fund I'll probably never collect.